When the Words I Have Are Not Enough
by LazyWriterGirl
Summary: In which Marley and Quinn communicate best through words not their own, and one novel in particular holds the key to understanding. Give it a chance, you may just find that you like Fabrose ;)


**A/N: Every time I read certain books I get all emotional and philosophical and it just makes me a highly unpleasant companion unless that's the kind of thing you enjoy discussing. Instead of boring my usual cohorts I turn to writing. The end results typically range from terrible to terrible, but seeing as effort has been put in (to some extent) it is only fair to these poor, almost-neglected works to share them with somebody. This particular piece is **_**not**_** that depressing, promise, and it's based on the song The Writer by Ellie Goulding. Feel free to listen as you read, I did that while writing. Enjoy **** also, slightly AU obviously.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing other than my own words. The characters who I force to speak them are clearly not mine. Also, anything in **_**bold italics**_ **is a quotation from a novel which I will not name. Just know that I do not own those beautiful words either.**

* * *

_When the Words I Have Are Not Enough_

She will never be Quinn's first choice, her position in the blonde's life permanently fixed at consolation prize. She will never be the one that Quinn intends her smiles for, never be the one for whom Quinn breathes and lives and strives. She'll never be the one and only in Quinn's world because in Quinn's world there is already a one and only and _she_ is out of reach now, married and living the glamorous life of a true star with the man she loves at her side. Still, Marley wonders if it would be so bad to dream of a life where one day, just for once if not ever again, Quinn will turn to smile at her, for her and not for the woman for whom she has taken to playing substitute in Quinn's life. It's hopeless, she decides.

* * *

"Welcome home," she says one night after Quinn's been gone for hours. She moves in to give the blonde a hug, just a sign to show she's there, only to feel still-strong arms blocking her own. The heavy scent of liquor and smoke clings to the porous leather of the blonde's jacket, washing over Marley. It smells like desolation.

"Gonna lie down." They don't speak again for the whole night and Marley opts for the couch instead of the bed, mostly because Quinn hadn't suggested that her company would be appreciated. At one point during the most ungodly hours of morning Marley feels something slide down from the top of the sofa towards her, eventually resting on her shoulder. One of Quinn's most well-loved paperbacks greets her when she turns her head, a bright pink bookmark protruding from the top of the weathered pages. Marley turns to the page to find a sticky note pointing towards a sentence, which she reads as she imagines Quinn is expecting her to do. _**What you must understand about me is that I'm a deeply unhappy person.**_ She nods even though she's not even sure if Quinn is still around to see it, only to have an answer when she feels soft lips press to the corner of her mouth seconds later. The pressure is gone before she can make anything of it, though she's not sure if it's because of a lack of emotion on the blonde's part, or the fact that her cheeks are still wet with tears. Somehow she finds herself crawling into bed minutes later. She's pleased when, after draping an arm over the blonde, she feels the reassuring press of Quinn's back against her chest. The little jolt of hope that she feels dies out when Quinn scoots forward as the warmth of Marley settles evenly over her skin

She doesn't understand how they can carry on living this way. Waking in silence, dressing in silence, cooking in silence, eating in silence, leaving in silence, returning to silence, fucking…in relative silence. It's a miracle if Quinn utters over one hundred words to her throughout the course of a week and Marley misses the days before Rachel Berry-Hudson's wedding, before Quinn had become so desperately entangled in her own thoughts that she could shut out the whole world for days upon end.

Then one day it ends and Quinn tugs her into their bedroom with an urgency that Marley has come to be familiar with. This time is sweeter than the last, she thinks. This time, she's doing this with me because she loves me. Marley winds her hands through Quinn's long-again blonde hair and holds onto her thoughts until, inevitably, she knows that this is no different from the last time. _**That didn't happen of course. Things never happened the way I imagined them.**_

* * *

She leaves Quinn for the first time the week before Christmas. She doesn't know why she does it, but she just begins to pack and once she's done sits quietly and waits for the blonde woman to get home. As soon as Quinn's right foot hits the threshold Marley is standing. "This isn't working and you know it isn't. So I'll be out of your hair and on my way. Thank you for everything, Quinn." And then, because she's feeling more than a little bittersweet about it all, the brunette quotes from Quinn's favourite book, "_**At some point, you just pull off the Band-Aid, and it hurts, but then it's over and you're relieved.**_" Then, because she isn't sure why she's doing this, she kisses Quinn one last time and walks out into the hall, down the stairs, and across the street to the nearest bus station, crying all the while. Luckily Santana and Brittany live not more than an hour away, and they gladly take her in. They're grateful for her presence, not only because she offers them the chance to speak to an adult who isn't themselves, but because little Felicia Lopez-Pierce absolutely adores her _tia _Marley.

She manages to stay away without any guilt. For the first day. The second day she worries over if Quinn is eating enough. The third, she hopes that the blonde has been bundling up properly. By the fourth day Marley is nearly inconsolable, and that continues on for a while. The seventh day, early on Christmas morning, she receives a text from the blonde – _**We didn't talk much. But we didn't need to.**_ – Marley makes a decision the second she sees the message.

Santana clicks her tongue as she helps Marley load her things into the trunk of the Lopez-Pierce household's Nissan. "You have to stop letting her treat you like this Marley. Look, Q's my best friend and I love her, but I also love you. You don't deserve this. Next time I see Q she's getting an ass-kicking, courtesy of Lima Heights." Marley giggles but shakes her head.

"She may not say it, but I know Quinn loves me. It may not be like how she loved Puck, or how she loved…loves, Rachel, but it's enough for me. I'm happy, Santana." The look on the Latina's face is priceless, the very picture of disbelief.

"You're not happy, Marley. Why don't you ask her why she keeps you around if she's clearly not as in love as you are?"

Marley pauses, knowing that Santana won't let this just go. She breathes deeply and responds with a quote from Quinn's book. It's one that she's memorized over the course of several years with Quinn. "_**I'd rather wonder than get answers I couldn't live with**_." Santana just gives her that hard, probing look that she only gives when she knows something else is up. Still, she doesn't press the matter, which is all the same to Marley.

She's surprised to find the door open when she gets back to the apartment and even more surprised when Quinn literally tosses her duffel bag across the room and holds Marley close to her. It's probably the first time they've just held each other close for the sake of being close, without there being a more, well, _pressing_ need to be attended to. They have a pleasant Christmas, and the light mood manages to stay with them until New Year's Eve. Then Rachel's on the screen as the countdown runs out and Quinn kisses Marley hard but she's not there at all. She's off somewhere else, sometime else, with some other brunette who isn't Marley.

* * *

Throughout the course of the next year, Marley leaves Quinn three more times and is kicked out by the blonde twice. They've become _that_ couple. The one that all their friends worry about and that they themselves have never held sympathy for, and yet they still find their way back to each other time and time again. Marley used to think it was romantic but by the first incident in which she was kicked out, she's grown more detached from the idea of love. She doesn't know quite why she stays with Quinn anymore. The blonde has never been abusive, and the sex is admittedly fantastic, but Quinn is far too intense in her silence, too concentrated in her own world to even bother acknowledging Marley's part in it. It's enough to destroy any small hope Marley has in her future happiness.

Since Marley's first attempt to leave, Quinn rarely speaks to her in her own words. It's always quotes, all the time, and Marley has taken to reading that stupid worn-out paperback of Quinn's every night. She'll probably never absorb the delicately powerful words as well as Quinn obviously has, but she's been getting better every day. One night during their after-dinner America's Next Top Model binge-watching episodes Quinn turns to her and says, with all the seriousness of a doctor informing a deceased patient's loved one, **"**_**They love their hair because they're not smart enough to love something more interesting.**_**" **Marley laughs so spontaneously that the blonde beside her evidently can't stifle her own mirth, and they're laughing up a storm as Tyra Banks and her co-judges berate some skinny waif for her awkward facial expressions.

"_**Sometimes I don't get you.**_" Marley says, and Quinn's eyes flash with recognition.

"_**You never get me, that's the whole point**_." It's the response that the original speaker of the words gets in the book, but even still it chills Marley to her core. She _wants _to get Quinn. That's all that she wants. All she could ever hope for, at this point.

* * *

In a long overdue moment, their relationship shifts. A little less than two years after the first time Marley left Quinn. The blonde had just been out buying groceries and had slipped and fell on her way up the stairs. Luckily Evan, a tough-mugged teen living in the unit under them, had seen her and had called the ambulance, making sure to keep Quinn warm as she lay broken halfway down the staircase. Upon hearing the news Marley contacts everybody, even Rachel, and the whole Glee club has been to see Quinn in her hospital bed at least thrice by the end of the week.

Rachel is one of the ones who lingers, much to Marley's chagrin, but it's Quinn who was injured and it's Quinn who Rachel is here for, so the taller brunette says nothing and makes herself scarce. The first week back at the apartment Rachel stays over and Quinn (who must be, according to her stern physician, the only occupant of her bed until she's healed completely), obviously concerned with the tiny diva's sleeping health, relegates Marley to the couch so that Rachel can have the guest-room bed all to herself. It would have continued on in this vein for a while, but for the fact that Rachel up and leaves in the middle of the night one night. They don't find out until the next morning when all that they have left of Rachel is a hastily written note explaining that she had been called by her manager and needed to leave immediately.

The mood in the apartment is considerably dampened by Rachel's departure. Still, Marley does not leave Quinn's bedside unless by the request of the blonde herself. Quinn starts speaking again, even if only a little, and still using quotes wherever possible, but she also seems to have a new appreciation for Marley's devotion, and the obvious love that the sweet woman still carries for her despite everything Quinn has failed to do. For her part, Marley isn't interested in proving herself to Quinn anymore. She just wants for the blonde to get better.

* * *

A few days following Rachel's sudden departure the diva calls the apartment phone, asking ever-so-nicely to speak to her dearest friend, Quinn. Marley gives the phone to Quinn wordlessly, but the blonde motions for her to stay if she wants, so she does, sitting at the armchair to Quinn's left. It's probably Marley's favourite seat in the whole apartment now. She watches uncomfortably as Quinn argues with Rachel, worrying about if the blonde's stress is going to affect her condition. Realistically it won't do anything, not unless Quinn gets up and starts to run around, but still. She's never seen the blonde so emotional and even as she half-listens to the reaming that Quinn is giving her starlet friend/crush/almost-obsession/cause-for-living she wants to cry because Rachel is the only one that seems to be able to make Quinn _feel_.

Quinn angrily hangs up and tosses the phone into the trash bin with surprisingly accurate aim. The pair sit in silence for a while, until Quinn's fingers ghost over Marley's shoulder, her other hand holding out a familiar paperback book. Marley has been reading bits and pieces of it for Quinn's amusement, seeing as she should be lying back and not crouched over a book according to the doctor.

"Where should I start?" Marley asks kindly. She knows that Quinn is going to wave her hand dismissively, as if to say "Anywhere" and when the blonde does this, she flips open to where she'd stopped last night. "_**I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.**_"

She stops at Quinn's hand pressing more firmly against her own and the shock of such simple, unassuming physical contact is a surprise that Marley welcomes after only a moment's hesitation. The blonde fixes her with a stare so knowing, as if through one passage of a book she's seen the sum of Marley's soul, and she says, voice raspy with too-much-sleep and too-little-speech, "_**She's cute, I thought, but you don't need a girl who treats you like you're ten: You've already got a mom.**_" Marley thinks back to a passage that had resonated with her a few days ago, determined to play Quinn's game for as long as she's allowed. This is the closest they've ever come to a real conversation, and while what she is about to say is not entirely accurate, Quinn will surely understand what she means.

"_**I felt the unfairness of it, the inarguable injustice of loving someone who might have loved you back but can't due to deadness.**_"

"_**I'm sorry. I know you loved her. It was hard not to.**_" Marley grins because she knows. She knows that Quinn knows that for Marley, not loving Quinn had never been an option. Somebody somewhere else had planned it, and she'd done what the plans had told her she needed to do. They're getting somewhere, Marley can feel it, and even though she has no idea where they're getting she knows it much in the same way that she knows how to breathe.

"_**I wanted to be one of those people who have streaks to maintain, who scorch the ground with their intensity. But for now, at least I knew such people, and they needed me, just like comets need tails**_." At this Quinn smiles and nods her head. It's clear to the brunette that Quinn fully accepts that their life together has become one of necessity. Separation is no longer an option because they are the only ones who can even begin to comprehend how the other functions.

"_**Why don't we break up? I guess I stay with her because she stays with me. And that's not an easy thing to do.**_" Marley's laugh is apparently infectious, because even through her slowly dissipating anger Quinn's chuckles escape through parted lips. Then the silence is back as quickly as it had left and Marley still has one thing to say before she has to get up and start making dinner.

"_**You can't just make me different and then leave. Because I was fine before.**_" She feels Quinn's hand give a squeeze to hers and she squeezes back before standing. It isn't until she reaches the door that Quinn speaks once more.

"Marley…_**We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreparably broken**_." Quinn then gives her the softest, shyest, most vulnerable smile that Marley believes the blonde has ever given anybody and it's enough.

No, it doesn't mend what had been previously broken between the two of them. Nothing in this world could do that. However, Marley thinks as she begins to dance around the kitchen in search of ingredients, there is hope and it needs only to be nurtured. She and Quinn may have another chance at something greater than what they'd originally planned for themselves. She just has to keep on holding on to her hope.

* * *

**A/N: Wow haven't written in a while… well, thanks to break I'll be able to do so more often, so yay for break! Hope you guys liked me, don't be shy to let me know if you did (or didn't…). Also, the book I used was Looking for Alaska, by John Green, in case you didn't know. I would recommend it to literally everybody… over the age of fifteen. **

**Much love to you all, please keep safe this winter season! Thanks for reading!**

**~ Kay ~**


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